


Serendipity

by EavingMal



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Bullies, High School AU, M/M, One-Shot, RPNAU, Tutoring, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 13:15:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11783922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EavingMal/pseuds/EavingMal
Summary: Jack pisses off a bully and runs to the nearest person for help.





	Serendipity

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Scorpio on the HiJack Discord chatroom for the idea and the meme that kicked off this fic.

Again. Goddamn again.

Jack had tried so. Damn. Hard. He’d sat near the door, he’d packed his bag at lunchtime, he’d run back to the lockers.

And yet, somehow, freaking Gordon had managed to catch up with him at the school gates. He was coming – there was no hiding it. Jack glanced around. Heavy backpack, skinny, un-athletic legs … there was no way he was getting away in time.

Shit, shit, shit.

BROAD GUY WITH A BACKPACK.

Jack jogged over to the brown-haired body walking with an easy pace away from him, and slowed to a stop alongside. He wasn’t exactly as imposing as Jack had thought on first glance – it was mostly his clothes that gave him his extra bulk. Sure, his shoulders were wide, but apart from that, he was actually about as lanky as Jack.

But beggars couldn’t be choosers. He was larger than Jack was, and that was all that mattered.

Walking with someone had slowed Gordon down a little, but he was still encroaching, and fast. Jack stepped in front of the boy and walked a few steps ahead, trying to use the boy’s much broader shoulders to hide his slim frame.

He glanced over his shoulder, once, then again, trying to be discreet, to see if Gordon was still following.

But not discreet enough. From behind him, he heard the brown-haired boy say, “What are you doing?”

His voice was nasal and not quite as deep as Jack had expected. Jack felt his back stiffen.

“Walking home,” he said, glancing back at the boy, meeting his sceptical green eyes for the first time.

“Who’s your friend?” the boy asked. Oh god he had lip piercings. Oh god. Jack was slightly torn between admiring them and realising with a sort of stunned horror that he had just turned one of the school punks into a human meat shield WITHOUT TELLING HIM FIRST AND EVERYTHING WAS ABOUT TO GO SPIRALLING OUT OF CONTROL.

“Uh. No-one,” Jack said.

“Uh-huh,” the boy said, and kept walking.

Jack shuffled to keep his two-three paces in front of the boy. Out of pure nerves, he realised that his mouth had started to work without the input of the rest of him. “Well. Actually. Not exactly my friend. More like. Um. Boy who wants to maybe try and add my back teeth to his collection of personal trophies. Once they’ve been kicked through the rest of my body. Um. Approximately.”

The brown-haired boy gave him a long, blank stare. After a moment, his lips started to work, lip studs swirling as he fiddled with the backs of them with his tongue.

“Do you deserve it?” the boy asked, finally.

“Um. Maybe? What timeframe are we talking about here?” Technically, Gordon had started it by being a complete and utter shit for the entirety of their schooling career together, but if he meant in the direct cause-and-effect sense, then Jack would have to admit that this latest act of predation was possibly, maybe, just the slightest bit related to the fact that the day before, Jack had hidden a new red sock in the pocket of Gordon’s new white band hoodie so that when it went through the wash, the entire thing had come out pink and ruined the logo.

Jack prayed he wouldn’t have to explain that, though.

But after another blank stare, the pierced lips pulled up at the side, and the boy smirked.

“Right. Gotcha.” He stopped walking.

Gordon was catching up to them Jack was frozen, aware of the beating he was about to receive.

The brown-haired boy just turned around, cupped one hand and said, “Hey, Gordon!”

Gordon stopped and scowled. “Whadda you want?”

“You got a problem with my mate here?” The boy jerked a thumb towards Jack,  who was desperately wishing he could be left out of the conversation.

“That’s your business how?” Gordon asked. Despite despising Gordon in every possible iteration of his being, Jack had to sort of admire his nerve. He was holding his ground pretty well for being faced with a be-piercinged punk who wore a leather jacket over his school uniform shirt.

“You’re going to get in trouble,” the boy replied calmly.

“I do what I want.”

“Oh yeah? Try this one. A football is kicked at a 50-degree angle to the horizontal, travels a horizontal distance of 20m before hitting the ground. What was its initial speed?”

Jack blinked. Mistake. Oooohhhh mistake. Big mistake. He was about to get ground into salsa. And this kid was about to go down with him.

When Gordon stopped short, Jack’s breath stopped with him. When Gordon went a shade Jack more often associated with his art supplies than a human face, he had to blink a few times to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.

“Screw you,” Gordon muttered, and walked away.

“There’s more where that came from!” the boy shouted after him.

There was a long, long silence.

Then Jack said, “What the hell just happened?”

“I’m his maths tutor,” the boy said. “Might or might not have cracked it at him last week when he forgot his homework.”

“You are my new God,” Jack said, jaw still hanging open. Still looking past the boy’s leather-clad arm towards Gordon’s retreating back, he held out his hand. “Jack, by the way.”

“Hah! Technically, Hamish. But call me Hiccup. Everyone does. Dad’s idea.”

“Your Dad calls you Hiccup?”

“Has since I was born.”

“As in, the thing where your chest spasms…?”

“Or as in slang for mistake, yeah.”

“Jesus. You might even have more problems than me.”

“I try not to count them. But let me know if Gordon continues to be one of them, yeah?”

Jack grinned. “Hiccup? I think this is the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship.”


End file.
